Why is there so much suffering in the world today?

Question

Why is there poverty, corruption ... why is racial prejudice still the number one problem of today?

Answer 1

sorry, but racial prejudice is not the number one problem of today. the number one problem of today is the multi-national holders of wealth and power, squeezing the life out of the planet's resources, and out of the people and fellow humankind that does not have the wealth and the power in the world today. This minority elite is the main problem facing us today. All your troubles are because of them, and their lack of ethics.

And it is a small amount of people too. 90% percent of the entire world's collective wealth belongs to less than 10% of the world's population. of those 10%, 1% owns 90% of that wealth. That means, a tenth of 1% of the entire world's population owns roughly 91% of the entire global wealth.

do the math, that means 1% of 6 billion people got nearly all of everything. 60 million people. that's the size of France. If the World's wealth moved all together to a unknown country, they would only be the size of France. The rest of the world would have less than 10% of the world's money, resources and trade commodities.

I think it is time the doves drove off the wolves and returned the world's rightful order to an ethical stability favoring the entire world, save a country the size of France. Instead of the other way around.

don't you? or are you one of the elite?

Answer 2

As long as humanity has existed, these problems have existed. Technological advances help us to find out about all the sorrows in the world much more quickly than we ever could have in the past.

There is probably a lot more that is "good" in the world today than there ever has been. There is a lot more knowledge (which may be good or bad), a lot higher standard of living, and a lot more people who have been given the chance to experience life than at any time in the past. No matter what we do to try to change the world, there will still be the old problem of Death awaiting us at the end...and the only way to fix this problem is to prolong forever that even worse problem: Boredom.

Another reason there seems to be so much suffering in the world is that our affluence allows us the leisure to empathize with the problems of others (although we may not actually do anything to help them.) When faced with the constant threat of starvation, finding shelter, or violent death, the sorrows of the World take a distant backseat to the sorrows of Me.

Answer 3

Well Deferent People Have Deferent Thing's They Believe In And Deferent Way's Of Thinking! And Racisim Is Something That Is Mostly Handed Down....... People Just Need To Slap There Self And Wake Up!

Answer 4

Racial prejudice is the government's policy. As long as Affirmative Action is the law of the land, there will be prejudice. But, when answering a question abuout Affirmative Action, President Clinton said, in so many words, that sometime its OK to be racist or sexist.
So, I wouldn't worry about it too much, if I was you.

Answer 5

Sadly, all is needed, or would be created by any society. Look at Poverty, and Corruption first since they kind of go hand in hand.

Give 5 kids equal anything, and they will try to claim who is the best by holding onto the most. One kid may beat up another, one may just waste his share, you get the drift. What this shows is that any human, like any animal, tries to be the "alpha" in the group.

So even if a society started out all equal, someone would desire to be in the lead of it. It is hard wired. It is what allowed Cave people to exist. Without a leader a group of people would wonder, or waste away. A leader is needed to define the scope of what the group should do. Look at any collection of animals. The leader tells them when to migrate, like birds. The leader demonstrates when to get food, like in lions. And the group’s life depends on the strength of the leader. (Not too many lions stay in power if they don't provide the pack food.)
A good historic example is Hitler. His countrymen were hungry and poor and in disarray. He promised a better life, and they elected him to do so. He did some good things for the people, which reaffirmed the group to follow him. If you give a starving society hope and food they will follow.

Once you admit there needs to be a leader, fighting for that leadership is a given. This fighting is what creates the poverty and corruption. If I hoard all the food, then people must listen to my ideas. If I am the strongest, or richest, I can do what I want...
There is not a tough leap there. So people trying to get the power, lie, cheat, steal or whatever to get the leg up over their group mates.

Why is there prejudice? It is a lot easier for a person to bias a group against a small sub set of that group then to force people to believe they are the problem. Back to the Hitler example. Instead of saying we did not revolutionize in the early 1900s and we are no longer a super power, he said that all the people were poor because there were impure Germans living among them. The group then can fight "amongst" themselves - small part of the group against the rest of it - instead of the group looking at the leadership and asking for their heads.
If you have an 'enemy' the group will pull together to overcome it. While they are pulling together they take their mind off of other things. If you are dying and grasping for air, you do not care what color your doctor is. But if you are wondering why you are paying the leadership respect, he has to give you a reason why. IT is always because of "THEM". They are going to take your food, or land, or kids... history is full of THEMs taking things away from others. It is easy to label THEM as anything that is not you. For example it may the people of one country will take our land and kill us all.

Okay that kind of explains it - except at a micro level. Now expand this concept to a world environment. For one country to be powerful, and have lots of cheap fun gadgets, someone has to put the labor into it. So much like one person wants to be in charge of one society, one society wants to be in charge of them all.
So for one society to be the ruling one, another society has to be the impoverished one.

Why is all needed? Without a society structure, we would have no goals or paths for us to move as a society, and without movement, the society dies.

Answer 6

It depends upon the individual point of you.. If you go on a holiday to Switzerland or Singapore you'd feel the world's a great place to live and you'd praise the lord, If you are engaged to News channel showing pathetic footage of poverty crime...you'd feel the world's not that good...

The World has not changed much... We should not be worrying about it.. Let's try to do our own jobs rightfully and keep hoping that the World would be good to all..

Answer 7

Why shouldn't there be suffering? Who promised us the rose garden?

Why shouldn't there be poverty, corruption? Were you born in the castle of a wealthy kingdom? Have you never seen what lust or envy has wrought?

Why shouldn't there be racial prejudice? Is it still the "number one problem"? According to whom?

If you are Black, or Anglo-Saxon, or Russian, or Jewish, why should I accept you? Why should I trust you? Just because you are human?

Answer 8

It's really sad isn't it, If I can tell you why, then maybe it would all stop, but I can't. There is just to much hate in the world, It comes from greed, selfcenterness, poverty, homelessness, disrespect towards human beings. God the list can go on and on. If I can get along with other people there isn't any reason why everyone can't.

Answer 9

Because people aren't getting their needs met. If they were, there would be no reason for hatred and violence, and everyone would work together for the benefit of the whole, not just the self.

Hopefully one day in the distant future we'll have evolved into that kind of being. But at this point in our evolution our animal self still dominates our being: impulsive, reactive, selfish, insecure, defensive, primitive, savage, brutal, beastly, unrefined.

Answer 10

because they world is no longer in it's natural state. I am not a tree hugger but our earth is used to having trees and vegitation and all these things work together in keeping the air clean and the rain coming and plenty of food growing and so on and to go along with all that, Jesus is coming back real soon. In Revelation of the bible, it speaks on these things happening toward the end